Host of "Social Studies"

Iris (e-reese) Bahr was born and raised in the Bronx but moved to Israel at the age of 13. She stayed there until completing her military service, whereupon she traveled alone through Asia, the chronicles of which constitute her humorous memoir DORK WHORE: MY TRAVELS THROUGH ASIA AS A 20-YEAR OLD PSEUDO-VIRGIN which was published through Bloomsbury this past March.

Upon her return from Asia, she enrolled in Brown University, during the course of which she conducted brain research at Stanford and cancer research at Tel Aviv University. She made the logical segue into acting and upon graduating magna cum laude, moved to NY, studying at the Actors Center conservatory with acclaimed teachers Earle Gister of Yale and Ron Van Lieu of NYU, and found an especially strong calling to physical theatre and clown work.

It is on the way back from clown class one starry night that Iris got hit by a truck whilst riding her bicycle, spent the next three months in a cast and decided to move to Los Angeles.

Since then she has found success as an actor, writer and director; her first one woman show Planet America ran for over a year and was nominated for Best Solo Performance by LA Weekly (currently in development as a feature film), her short film THE UNCHOSEN ONES played numerous festivals, and most notably, she  has starred on such TV shows as Curb your Enthusiasm (as the recurring Orthodox Jewish character Rachel Heineman of the famed ski lift episode), Commander in Chief, E-Ring, King of Queens, Friends and numerous other shows and pilots.

In October of 06, Iris debuted her second solo show DAI (enough) about a suicide bombing in Tel Aviv at the Culture Project. It had a highly successful run Off-Broadway and will be playing the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in August 2007.  DAI was nominated for a Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Solo Performance. Iris was recently invited to perform DAI at the United Nations in front of over 100 ambassadors and delegates.